Paraffin & Palm Spilled Salt A bitter of angelica & artichoke with carbolic strengthens & pacifies her body. Or sixpence spent brings up a blood-sweat & blister pops by tonic & suction cups. She’s not bilious but swollen lymphatic. Cracked bone cage filled with paraffin & palm spilled salt. She’s undressed & under wraps — […] More »

The September-October 2009  issue of This Magazine should now be in subscribers’ mailboxes (subscribers always get the magazine early, and you can too), and will be for sale on your local newsstand coast-to-coast this week. All the articles in the issue will be made available online in the weeks ahead, though, so keep checking back […] More »

The July-August issue of This Magazine is now in subscribers’ mailboxes (subscribers always get the magazine early, and you can too), and will be for sale on better newsstands coast-to-coast this week. Two pieces from the issue are already online: Jenn Hardy‘s cover story on the new generation of farmers using the principles of permaculture […] More »

Alchemy of Traces There’s a tyrant of a ghost who visited my apartment on Dufferin Street, strangled me with a towel. “I was born before the gold rush, before the flood, before once upon a time. I want to be known in harrowing grief.” In a nightmare, my herm- aphrodite muse whispered, “To lose a […] More »

Waiting for you to stop staring, and see me. — Crutches,  Britney Wilson. Britney Wilson stopped waiting a long time ago. These days if anyone is still staring, it’s usually in rapt attention after she delivers a reading of Crutches. _ One part rallying cry and one part scathing indictment of able-bodied ignorance, the poem […] More »

can’t seem to keep up with things all the day to day things that demand attention like laundry groceries phone bills cleaning the endless dirty dishes the nonstop dust and debris take out the recycling take the vitamins keep the teeth flossed and gray out of the hair shave the pits and legs and water […] More »

How poets, not politicians, are politicizing Ottawa youth More »

IDEA MAN It always makes me wild with rage when the complexities of a federal election are idiotically reduced to a single issue for voters. The major parties, and the mainstream media, seem to assume that people have the attention span of three-year-olds. Then along comes Jack Layton’s Speaking Out: Ideas That Work for Canadians, […] More »

I dedicate this song to the man I met 5 minutes ago I dedicate this lung to a bar full of blue smoke I dedicate this liver to the chronic wasting of beer I dedicate this tube top to breasts that would hold it up I dedicate these teeth to dentistry I couldn’t buy them […] More »